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David Cohen: A Fad or Here to Stay?

DAVID COHEN: Google the phrase “sharing economy” and you’ll get a flood of opinions on what this new-age movement of sharing goods and services actually means. While some ridicule this notion of business, others champion the companies and entrepreneurs behind it that are making everyday life easier for the consumer.

The question comes down to this: Is the sharing economy just another buzzword that will fade faster than we define it — or is it actually an evolution of our economy and the way we live and work?

David Mandell is co-founder and CEO of a company that I’m an investor in called PivotDesk, which falls under the sharing-economy umbrella. PivotDesk places small to medium-size businesses within existing businesses that have office space to spare. It’s a unique business proposition that lowers burn rate for both entities.

When I spoke with David recently on the topic of the sharing economy, he provided an interesting perspective. He told me that we should be embracing this new way of doing business because outside of the obvious economic benefits, the sharing economy is actually making us better citizens. When you take a ride-sharing service like Uber, both you and the driver have the opportunity to add a star-value to the experience. The same is true with Airbnb, Lyft and the majority of sharing-economy services. By assigning a value to the transaction, we become aware of the way we treat one another. Each participant — vendor or customer — is treated as an equal.

The economic foundation of America was built on bartering. How many times do you remember your parents borrowing tools from a friend, or a cup of sugar from the neighbor? As an investor, I’ve seen businesses in a variety of industries, but none have intrigued me as much as those in the sharing economy. When most of our interactions with one another take place behind a keyboard, our conversations in the “real world” become abrupt and transactional. The sharing economy fundamentally forces us to have a real relationship with the person on the receiving end.

Maybe this isn’t a new economy at all, but an evolution. Maybe the sharing economy is in fact our way of utilizing technology to come full circle to the economy as it was — bartering and sharing. And, hopefully, along the way, this evolution is bringing us back to being better citizens, too.

Comments (2 of 2)

I remember in 1996/97 and even later the headlines were similar.....'The Internet...its a Fad'. The Internet was not a fad and neither is the sharing economy. Its going to be big and bigger than anyone thinks its going to be.

Meta search comparison sites like http://www.sharingXchange.com that focus on aggregating the sharing economy sites will help people make it easier to search and share.

3:16 pm April 15, 2014

Angela wrote:

"The sharing economy fundamentally forces us to have a real relationship with the person on the receiving end." Great line and it's definitely an evolution!

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